No Evil Angel

"Love is familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love."--William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act I, Scene II

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Oz Perkins's new film, Longlegs (2024) is on brand for the director. It's a film that's chock full of enigmatic and alarming images and an airless and oppressive mood. It finds the director moving away from the kinds of aimless but atmospheric films of his early career and toward more conventional idioms. Part of this is the structure of the serial killer procedural, which imposes on Perkins an actual plot whether he likes it or not (I rather think he does not). Part of it might be maturity. In any event, it's the first of the director's movies that invites comparisons to other films. You may hear it compared to The Silence of the Lambs or Seven, but Perkins has too singular a vision to allow any such comparisons to gain any traction. Whatever his influences may be, he has completely subsumed them into his own cinematic anima.

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One Damned Thing After Another

You don't have to squint very hard to see the provenance of Cold Blows the Wind (2023, directed by Eric Williford). It's part Shock Suspense Stories from the old E. C. Comics, part Pet Sematary, part H. P. Lovecraft, and part Creepshow II (thanks for the ride, lady!). Mix well. Pour. I don't mean any of this as criticism. Genres tend to remix a common pool of elements and horror movies are particularly prone to this. That's how genres form in the first place. Some filmmakers do it better. Some do it worse. Sometimes, the swipes show. Sometimes they don't. In the case of Cold Blows the Wind, whenever this film borrows something, the filmmakers leave the knife.

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